Intel might be about to give AMD a massive boost

In 2011, Intel and Nvidia agreed to a cross licensing deal that gave both companies a license to each other's patents. The deal will to come to an end in 2017 and rumours have begun to circulate that Intel may be considering making a similar deal with AMD this time around.

In order to license Nvidia's technology, Intel paid the company $1.5 billion over the course of five years. An investment of that size could be quite useful for AMD seeing as the company has steadily lost ground to its rival Nvidia in the graphics card market over the past few years. On the CPU side of things, Intel has gone unchallenged by AMD's chips for quite some time as well.

AMD's stock has already risen by almost 5 per cent to $2.76 a share solely on speculation that company may soon be making a deal with Intel. It is still unclear as to how Intel would make use of the company's graphics technology however it could possibly end up in its data centre server chips. Another possibility is that Intel could be licensing AMD's patents to help it fight Nvidia if the company decides to pursue the legal disputes that existed before their cross licensing deal.

A cross licensing deal between Intel and AMD would certainly benefit both companies but consumers may also benefit from increased competition. AMD has been playing catch up with the company for some time but with a large influx of cash it may just be able to regain some of the ground it has lost to Nvidia over the past few years.